Aaron Voss for his firearms update, Ian A. A. Watson for his fearless transcription skills, Dave Poole and the CCP Web Team for making the open development process possible, and the entire V20 community that tirelessly playtested during the open development process and gave us more feedback than we could have hoped for.

Contents

Vampire: The Masquerade exploded into hobby games in 1991 and inspired a generation of fans of which the game industry had never seen before or since. The cultural significance Vampire left on not just the gaming world but on modern vampire-related pop culture can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today. Vampire: The Masquerade - 20th Anniversary Edition brings the entire Classic World of Darkness experience full circle and will serve as the perfect anniversary milestone to celebrate two decades of gaming after dark. This is the original Masquerade in all its glory, and our way of saying thank you and welcome home.

This book is divided into several chapters, each of which is designed to explore and explain a specific area of the game. Remember, though, that in a storytelling game, the most important “chapter” is your imagination. Never let anything in this book be a substitute for your own creativity.

Everyone who had preordered either version of Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition received a free PDF copy of the book (marble cover above), starting September 23, 2011. Several typos within the book and on the character sheet were fixed for the PDF. The PDF became available for general release on September 29, 2011.

This is the first Classic World of Darkness book and Vampire: The Masquerade book to be released since the cancellation of those lines in 2004 (not including 2011's April Fools joke). It assumes Gehenna hasn't happened (yet), and places the metaplot in the hands of the players. The presentation is setting-agnostic, allowing individual Storytellers to choose which metaplot events (Assamite schism, Gangrel leaving the Camarilla, etc.) have occurred and which haven't.

The spine of the book bears the Roman numerals XX for 20, which is also a subtle reference to the notorious Page XX of previous editions.

Tony DiTerlizzi was left out of the credits initially for a piece of his in the Antagonist section. This piece is from the same section of VTM: Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Edition, for which he was likewise uncredited; Tony's piece was misattributed to Vince Locke. This may make the longest time (13 years) between a piece's first appearance and its eventual proper credit, which appears in the V20 PDF.

No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who deny death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to hell with me.

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— Günter Dörn, Das Ungeheuer Darin

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The Children of Seth will always hate us again and again, for we are their predators. We are their Masters and they know this, deep in their soul.